Disgust with the morally degenerate and extraordinarily dangerous antics of Japan’s nuclear power industry has reached an even greater pitch with the revelations that their novel approach to reducing the radiation exposure of clean-up workers was to line their radiation detectors with lead.

According to taped conversations provided by whistleblowers, one of the subcontractors Tokyo’s reviled nuclear power monopoly Tepco hired to clean up the fallout from its exploding reactors reduced the radiation exposure of its clean-up workers by making them wear lead-lined dosimeters.

The directive apparently came straight from their board, and was considered essential as otherwise the workers would have reached the legal limits for radiation exposure too quickly.

One director ordered a team of 10 workers to commence work with the lead shielded dosimeters, but 3 objected. The director later called a “meeting” with the holdouts, which one of them cunningly taped and much later provided to the press.

The director denies giving the orders, but several other employees affirm it was given.

Tepco’s approach to managing the disaster was apparently to subcontract out all the dirty work to a web of smaller companies, many of whom seem to have got round radiation exposure limits by simply hiring people off the street and dumping them as soon as their limit was reached, if they were lucky.

The government has said it will investigate reports of the radiation shielded radiation detectors, although somehow it seems online calls for the company’s executives to be charged with murder will not be heeded.

A quick bit of research on lead poisoning just revealed that it only occurs if you breath in lead dust or swallow lead objects. Considering the radiation cleaners are actually wearing hazmat suits or the like, it's probable they won't be in that much danger (since they won't be breathing it in). Not the smartest move, but whatever.

Like always with the incident, the question is if the Japanese people know just how horrendously their government handled the disaster.

Or if they know about details like the US lead NATO team was the one to step in and take control after the shock of how badly they where handling the plants became apparent and that they would have gone into meltdown otherwise...

This is contemptible. Endangering the lives of workers, in order save a few yen and make the company look good, should be considered a criminal act of reckless endangerment. From what I've seen of Japanese justice, however, an abject apology will probably be all that is required to satisfy the government.

That thickness of lead would not cut it much but still this is China quality stuff.
But at least they were not smart enough to use polyethylene as lead will mostly stop gamma rays but it's not very good at stopping neutrons.

Absolutely. Chernobyl was so much bigger than the problems in Japan and, despite this latest revelation about TEPCO, was a crime against humanity. The Soviets and now the Russian government are still hiding the truth about the damage to Ukraine.

I would drag those TEPCO fags out of their HQ, right into the hot zones and have them clean that shit up with their toothbrushes.

Seriously. We ALL know that those assholes are the true culprits in this whole mess. But the truth is, the Japanese still happily bow down to them and grovel in the dirt because they are supposedly higher ranking in their silly little social hierarchy.

They let temporary workers or otherwise unemployed persons do all the dirty work. There is no moral or ethics in Japan. All except the true culprits suffer. That's the true face of Japan. There is no rosy "Anime-Japan", where everything is fine. Living or traveling in Japan right now isn't nearly as safe as they would like you to believe. Radiation is still a major issue even in very remote places in Japan.

This has nothing to do with China or Japan. This here is the best example of the typical asian trait of Face Saving.

Face Saving is "problem solving" by ignoring the problem and covering it up. All asians do that, not only the Chinese, the Japanese, but also Koreans, Taiwanese, Thai, Philippines etc.

Only by steady advancing the societal and technological ladder, there will be asian technocrats who may confront problems head on, instead of just evading them by covering them up. But, as this case shows us, even the "highly advanced" Japanese cant help but revert to their asian cultural roots if shit hits the fan so hard, that no amount of civilizational advancement can solve the problem.

Lead just blocks α-rays and β-rays. maybe even ε-rays, but not γ-rays, so it's not really betrayal of the people since their suits should at least protect them from the first two. γ-rays have the highest energy and go through everything, including the human body (like the x-rays), but their lasting-range is really short, so unless you go directly into the reactor the exposure to γ-rays is unlikely (unless you got β-rays and ε-rays, which are respectively elektrons [e-] and positrons [e+], if those two collide they degenerate into 2 γ-quants) unless you go directly into the reactor and stand beside the nuclear mass....